


Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)

by MercuryGray



Series: The Royal Tigress [1]
Category: Sons of Liberty (TV)
Genre: F/M, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:56:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4826483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sir Thomas Gage has had a very long and very trying day, and now there is a strange woman in his bedroom, and he is finding it very hard to refuse her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)

**Author's Note:**

> So, Sons of Liberty was awful, in so many ways, but there is something so fun about breaking down proud and haughty men, and Sir Thomas Gage was practically begging for it from the first moment we met him onscreen. And my dark and dirty side had not had a good outing in a long, long time. 
> 
> So there is this. Plot? What plot? Who does that? DEFINITELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK OR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION.

_And graven with diamonds in letters plain_

_There is written, her fair neck round about:_

**_Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,_ **

**_And wild for to hold, though I seem tame._ **

_\-- Sir Thomas Wyatt, Whoso List To Hunt._

* * *

 

 

Sir Thomas closed the door behind himself and took a deep breath. The party had not gone as well as he would have liked, and it really was his wife’s fault -- she’d forgotten to have the kitchen serve the wine he’d purchased especially from France, she’d neglected the right form of address when speaking to the Duchess, and she hadn’t worn the diamond clips as he’d requested, when he’d known full well that such a well-dressed company of ladies were to be in attendance and were sure to notice that she wore no jewels.

 

And now her bedroom door was shut, with absolutely no intention of taking his instruction. Not even the courtesy of letting her  maid answer the door and claiming to be ill or tired or some such nonsense. Just a locked door.  Did she wish to make him look a pauper? Or, worse, a fool? People would say it was because she was an American, and on some days, Sir Thomas would have to agree with them.

 

Now he was tired, and more than a little angry, and his only intention now was to drink some of his excellent wine and go to bed. But for that, he would need his valet -- and the man had not yet made his usual silent appearance. “Parfitt?” he asked, stepping into the room’s general gloom and finding his wine cruet and glasses in the dark.

 

“I believe he’s left,” a female voice spoke from the corner.

 

Sir Thomas turned, surprised to see the person of a flame-haired nymph seated very nimbly in one of his Chippendale chairs. They’d spoken earlier in the evening, some pleasantries about the weather and the state of politics. No mention had been made to a midnight dalliance. Though, as memory served, they had spoken just after the business with the Duchess, and she had asked after Mrs. Gage and he had given her, in a moment of unguarded truthfulness, a very long-suffering look. Had she misunderstood him, taken it for an invitation?

 

“Lady , I am afraid you may have mistaken me -- my mood is quite foul and I am in no fit state for company.” Sir Thomas raised his glass and drained half of it without even bothering with the pleasantry of smelling the vintage or admiring its color. He had no appointments tomorrow -- he intended to get drunk, an indulgence he did not often allow himself, and sleep in exceptionally late. If only to forget the tragedies of his beautiful (but otherwise stupid) wife.

 

“A problem with Mrs. Gage, perhaps?” The nymph asked. _Lavinia_ , his mind supplied. That was her name. _Lady Lavinia Montrose._ Married to some merchant with a title and more money (and years) than sense. The sort of indulgent husband every lady of quality dreams of, if she likes to live for herself a little. He was pleased that at least he’d remembered her name. Encounters of this sort were so awkward when one didn’t know one’s partner’s name.

 

“I don't think that's any of your concern.”

 

“Perhaps not.” She made no move to leave, and instead raised her hand to the long, luxuriant curl of hair left down from her coiffeur and twirled it around her finger invitingly.

 

Gage watched the progress of the curl with intense fascination, and, upon reflection, found the gesture highly incendiary. “Don't you have a husband at home, Lady Lavinia?”

 

“My husband, Sir Thomas, is rather old and rather gouty, and is at this present moment at home in bed sleeping so soundly I doubt the trumpets of judgement day would wake him. Whereas I am here, in your house, in your room, behind several very large and very thick doors. And Mrs. Gage is in her own bed, down the corridor...and you are in a foul mood." The curl made another revolution around her finger, dropping away from her hand and falling against her collarbone again.

 

"My valet should be here --"

 

"I've sent him away," Lady Lavinia said with a smile. "I must say, he was very quick to take my meaning, which surprised me. I did not take you for a man of ....many _liaisons_." She said it with the French flourish in her voice.

 

Several choice words flashed across Sir Thomas’ mind -- harlot, hussy, brazen -- that he did not think it quite polite to utter aloud. And yet...he did find himself in the market for the goods on offer. He settled for another phrase. "You are very _impudent_ , madam."

 

"I am told my impudence is my best feature, sir. Should you like to see any of the others?"

 

Gage considered a moment and finished his wine, carefully setting the glass down and taking a seat across from Lavinia. Why should he not take her offer? Margaret was asleep, and he was feeling a little...needy. And the lady herself was quite a treat to the eyes. He met her gaze a moment and made some small gesture with his hand, bidding her continue. A pleased and catty grin crept across her face, uninhibited, and she rose from her seat with all the gravity of an empress at her leveé, stealing slowly around the back of Gage's chair, trailing a hand along the shoulders of his jacket.  "Now, Sir Thomas, if I were Mrs. Gage, I do not think I should ever like to see you so distressed," she began. "A wife's duty is to ease her husband's cares, not add to them." A set of clever, deft fingers lifted his wig from his head, raking out the cap underneath and pulling out the ties from his own dark hair. Sir Thomas closed his eyes a moment, savoring. Margaret never did that. Margaret hardly touched him except to kiss him good-morning. "A husband ought to come home from a party and find _pleasure_  in his wife's company."

 

"You don't know my wife, Lady Lavinia." Something about the way she said _pleasure_ touched him like a brand.

 

"You find her manner towards you … cold?”

 

"Frigid would be a word."

 

"Then we must find some way of warming you," She murmured, and every syllable of her speech promised an entire garden of torments to the man brave enough to match her. Her fingers played through his hair again, allowing him a brief moment to breathe and remember that he was still fully clothed and so, damn her, was she. The fire in the grate was practically gone, but he found himself suddenly feverish, grateful when her hands left his hair and her shadow moved around to the front of his chair -- a leopardess, stalking her prey.

 

"You are a tease and a minx, madam, and I find neither attractive," he growled, fixing his gaze on the point of her stomacher, planning his campaign rather quickly -- a short scouting party up the folds of her petticoats, with preparation for resistance at her garters. A brief retreat while the resistance was dealt with.

 

She did not look surprised at this latest statement -- indeed, she looked rather pleased, a look Sir Thomas fancied he was beginning to know rather well. _Does she enjoy baiting me?_ "And what shall you do about it, Sir Thomas? Shall you _punish_ me?"

 

It took only a moment to vacate his chair and seize her, his lips insistent and uncharitable, a reaction she drank up as easily as water, her clever fingers hesitating for the briefest of moments before slipping and clawing at his jacket's shoulders, trying to prise him out of it. Away it went. (Her own lips were like fire,  every moment of her touch full of the frenzied heat of fever). She tripped backwards out of her mules as he pushed towards the bed (his bed, Margaret hadn't brought a thing to their marriage, it had been his money that had bought this house and everything in it) and did not even attempt a sound as the backs of her thighs hit the mattress, her hands back at the business of his stock, his waistcoat, the ties of his shirt. The fall of his trousers was easily dealt with, the volume of her skirts less so -- though when she perceived the difficulty she was only too eager to help, hitching them up and crawling backwards a little, her smile still leonine and lovely as she regarded him from the bed.

 

Gage twitched the rest of his stock away and practically dove at her skirts, drawing her legs apart with a ferocity that would have terrified his wife. But Lavinia Montrose, he was quickly realizing, was not Margaret  Gage, and if the General wanted to take the mount of Venus with an all-out cavalry charge instead of a simpering diplomatic envoy, then she would let him do it, and what was more, she would be pleased with the proceedings.  And whereas Margaret had a kind of helpless cry when he entered her, Lavinia only murmured in appreciation and knocked her knees up tighter around his ribs to encourage him.

 

The bedframe creaked  at the distress of being so repeatedly ill-used, but Thomas didn't really care who heard, plowing at her with an intensity that would have beggared his wife's faculties and taking a special pleasure of his own in the little noises of his partner. Anything to wipe that grin from her face, he promised himself. Anything at all.

 

He finished a little faster than was usual for him, (but Margaret hardly encouraged him; some nights it was like making love to a wooden figurehead) and rested for a moment, feeling her thighs relax a little, away from his sides. His hands, which had for the most part been steadying himself against the bed, found the backs of her legs, working upwards from the join in their two bodies along until he found her garters, shuffling them aside and stripping back first one stocking, and then the other. She made no move to escape him, watching him with her clear, cat-like gaze, curious as to what he would do next.

 

And suddenly, he was tired. Margaret did not tire him so, nor the maids, but this heathenish hussy had taken a great deal of his strength -- and he had not been trying to be kind. He disengaged himself from her embrace and took a half-step away from the bed, occupying his gaze across the room on one of the paintings while she recovered herself.

 

It was not his nature to entertain guests of this sort in his bed -- a corridor, a chair, the desk in his office, or a guest bedroom were all better options by far. His bed was his preserve, his last domain, and he did not wish to share it - especially with the maids. It gave them airs to say they’d slept in the master’s bed. Even he went to Margaret’s room when he wished to keep her company. She never came here.

 

Margaret, Margaret. Why had he chosen Margaret? In his youth she seemed an ideal wife -- biddable, tame, and a delight to behold. Her family was good, her health excellent, and she seemed capable of a crop of fine children, provided she was regularly plowed and seeded. And yet in all these things she had come to disappoint him -- the merry, daring spirit that had served her so well in the ballroom had retreated considerably after their wedding night, and she no longer looked at him with laughing eyes. Had he gone cold first, or had she? It hardly mattered. He had done what the law required of him -- housed her, clothed her -- and maintained his pursuits elsewhere. She should have been glad with the arrangement -- the trouble to her person was minimal. And he asked so little of her! Should it be so hard to give what he asked?

 

Apparently it was. Or perhaps it was only that girls in New Jersey were not taught the same way as girls in London?

 

But the flesh of those legs beneath Lavinia’s stockings and garters was white and firm and he had a sudden desire now - a rapidly stirring desire, if his body was to be believed, that he should like to see the rest of that white flesh, that he deserved more than a half-clothed romp this evening. She was here, had come her of her own accord, and he wished to sample more of her delights.

 

(How long had it been since he had woken up next to a woman, drawn his fingers through her hair and around her waist? He did not sleep in Margaret’s bed, simply did his buisness there and left. Margaret liked that better, and so did he -- her hands were always cold and she never seemed happy with him anymore.)

 

He turned -- Lavinia was retrieving a stocking from the floor as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “No, stay.” The words sounded strange in his mouth.

 

She looked at him with a little bit of surprise. ‘Have you a maid you trust to dress me?” she asked matter-of-factly. _This isn’t the first bedroom she’s invited herself inside_ , Thomas thought to himself. Somehow, the prospect didn’t bother him.

 

“I’ve undone enough stays myself to do them up again,” he said. She raised a single eyebrow, considered a moment, and then flattened and folded the stocking and placed it on the seat of the nearest chair.

 

“Very well.” She turned and, catching sight of herself in the glass, studied her reflection for a moment and took a moment to pull the pins and other _accoutrements_ out of her hair, letting the auburn mess cascade over her shoulders. (His wife’s hair was long and blonde and wonderfully soft to the touch, but this promised another selection of delights all together.)

 

Gage smiled and helped himself to another glass of wine, standing aside to watch her undress. First the pins holding her gown and stomacher closed, laid aside with her hair-pins, then the gown itself, draped over the chair. Several petticoats, each drawn tight around a waist cinched tight by stays. She undid the knots behind her with a practiced hand, drawing the lacing out slowly and carefully, mindful not to let it break. There was just enough light in the room to give her chemise a kind of diaphanous glow as it fell away from her sides, the stays joining her gown on the chair.

 

Sir Thomas felt the air around around him growing close.

 

Finally finished, she turned to look at him. “Will you not offer me a glass of wine, sir?” she asked, hair glinting in the candlelight.

 

“You don’t look as though you need it.” _Let me deny her something. Let me see how she takes it._ Margaret would have gone without, and he wondered, now, what she would do. Take it herself? Fight him for it? Either possiblility held promise.

 

“In that case, General, I shall take some of yours.” She crossed the room, plucked the glass from his own hands and took a sip. Her hand jerked a little, and a spill of wine ran down her chin and dove down her neck, making a dark stain along the neck of her chemise. “Clumsy,” she said, looking at him with an intent gaze that told Sir Thomas that she had full well meant to do it. “Will you not help me?”

 

It was good wine -- a shame to let it go to waste. His tongue lapped at her lips, traveling down her throat and collarbones and pausing in between her breasts, the last lees of the wine gone. (Her skin -- oh, her skin was warm and fair and smelled of _woman_. Margaret did not let him do this, though she should have obliged him.)

 

“Hungry, are we?” Lavinia asked, and Sir Thomas wondered why she should say such a thing until he realized that he had done something he had not had cause to do in a long time -- he had moaned in satisfaction, completely of his own accord. Now something would have to be done to wipe that grin off her face. “There is more where that came from, sir,” she offered, holding the cup high as if she meant to spill the whole upon herself. But he was in no mood for a wine-struck bawdy house romp. He’d had enough of those -- he wanted his bed, and his sheets, and this divine creature in them. He caught her hand before she poured the thing down her breasts (such lovely things, alert beneath her shift) and slowly set it aside, his eyes closing in on his great bed again. She followed his gaze and took his meaning well enough, smiling (again that grin, like a lioness about to pounce! He would have to do something about that) and walking slowly and deliberately back to the bed, climbing up (there was the thigh again, pale and perfect) and settling back against the pillows, one knee bent up slightly, the other foot rolling outward with the insinuation that those legs would be perfectly happy to spread themselves at his slightest word. She arranged herself with the grace of a queen holding court and then looked back at him, daring him to disturb her.

 

He unencumbered himself from his breeches, still limply clinging to his hips, and climbed over the end of the bed with a leonine smile of his own, letting her seize his face and take possession of his lips, another plan of battle forming in his mind, the plains of her stomach and the hills of her breasts, then around to the gloriously firm backside those thighs had promised.

 

Then she was sitting up, and he was moving back with her, and she was on her knees, smoothing him down onto the bed, stroking and petting and she was astride him easily as if he were her saddle, though his sabre was still without the sheath it badly wanted again. This hadn’t been the plan, and somehow, Sir Thomas did not at this moment _care_ , for Margaret did not do this, had not ever done this, and he was finding he wished that in his youth he had found an Amazon like this to wed, and it had been he, and not the old, gouty Sir James Montrose, who had plucked this plum from the tree and had the liberty to enjoy these delights every night.

 

Her flesh was hot against his own, but she did not seem interested in obliging him just yet, content to keep his lips busy with her own, drawing her hips back and forth along his until he was quite sure he would go blind with the effort it took not to seize her and draw her down onto him. But in her present position she could do nothing about an assault to her own person, and he took the opportunity, when her chemise slipped invitingly over one shoulder, to move his lips from her face down to her neck, her collarbones, finally capturing one pleasantly aroused nipple. A murmur of delight, her fingers tightening in his hair and pressing him a little closer. She was slippery as silk now, and finally, finally, she moved one of his hands off her shoulders to guide himself inside.

 

Sir Thomas was not sure what school for scandal Lady Lavinia had learned her tricks at, but he was quite sure it wasn’t the same one he had attended, and he had a few tricks of his own, tricks his wife -- or his maidservants -- seldom required. When he had been only a young officer, flush with pay and the gaiety of youth, he had spent a good deal of time in the whorehouses of London and learned all manner of depravity and a good measure of patience, too, and he knew what a small measure denial bought a man back in pleasure. A fingerstroke along the deepest part of her keel, and her eyes nearly rolled up in her head, the grin gone. _Yes, my lovely, beg and ask who is master here,_ he thought to himself, allowing himself a pleased grin of his own. When her gaze came back to earth, her eyes were dark and lustrous.

 

“Do it again,” she commanded, her hands hard against his scalp.

 

“Jade,” Sir Thomas murmured, a smile fixed on his own lips.

 

“But your jade, sir,” she countered back, her voice, dry for want of drink, a few notes lower. “Or should you like me to wake your wife?”

 

“You’ll wake her anyway,” he promised, putting his fingers back to work and watching with pleasure as the auburn head slipped back and the lioness turned briefly into a kittenish thing straining against his hand for more of the touch that sparked her so. And then the lioness came back and seized his shoulder in her teeth, every sound she could not wake the house with furiously laid out against his shirt and skin.

 

There was only so far patience would carry a man, and Sir Thomas had reached his breaking point. He fitted himself inside and she came to him like a match to powder, all pretense of patience gone, riding him at a gallop that would have made a cavalry officer proud. He could feel the quiver in her walls and a little spill of heat and finally felt his own end come, his whole body tense as a bowstring and then suddenly calm again. She looked down at him panting, a few of her red curls plastered to her forehead and face, her smile nothing but wanton delight.

 

“How have we done, sir?” she asked, still breathing hard. “Do you find your mood improved?”

 

“Immensely,” he agreed with a smile, brushing a hair away from her face. And, then, in vain curiosity,  “Has the enterprise been...profitable for you?”  It had never mattered before that a woman should feel pleasure from him, but he desired to know, to have some confirmation, that she had been pleased, that he should not be some...some story to tell her friends over tea.

 

(God, would it not be magnificent to keep this woman at his command and pleasure? The thought of a mistress had not been of interest before, but for this goddess, he just might break his own rules. The first Lavinia had been the Queen of the Latins, and this Lavinia could be even more queenly still. He could arrange to have a townhouse let at modest expense in a good neighborhood here in London, and if there was to be another campaign it should not be difficult to procure lodgings in whatever place the army sent him...)

 

The catty grin returned, and for the first time all night, he himself was pleased to see it. “Immensely,” she repeated, sliding off his hips and going for the wine and another glass. Her chemise, he was also pleased to see, was soaked with sweat where it had hit the small of her back.

 

Gage himself rose from bed, availing himself of the chamber pot and realizing, as his back cried out to simply move to the corner of the room, how much his gymnastic endeavors had taxed him. "Have you anywhere to be tomorrow?” he asked casually, cleaning himself on the towel at the basin and dousing a little water on his face.

 

“Nowhere pressing,” she replied. “I am for town another week, at least, and then Sir James will probably go home. I need not accompany him.”

 

He considered this a moment, peeking out the window with a single finger. “The streets are doubtless very dark -- and there is the fog,” he offered. “Go home in the morning -- I’ll have a carriage brought round for you.”

 

Lavinia paused in her glass of wine and looked at him with frank surprise. (He was himself surprised, if he was being truthful, but he found that, with the coin of his anger spent, he wished for softer pleasures, and the feel of a woman sleeping beside him was one of them.) “And your wife?”

 

“My wife is in the suburbs of my displeasure,” Sir Thomas responded smoothly. She would not come to this room unless summoned, and he would not call her.

 

“And where am I, sir?” Lavinia asked with evident interest, surveying him over the rim of her glass.

 

“The heights of praise.” He could not recall a time when his voice had cause to be so soft, or sound so affectionate.

 

“Well.” 

 

“Stay,” Sir Thomas asked again. “I think you like a warm bed nearly as much as I do.”

 

She grinned again at that.

 

(In the morning when the maids came to light the fires there was an unholy riot of discarded clothing all over Sir Thomas' room, and a red-haired lady in his bed, and the maids who knew Sir Thomas and his ways best were only glad it wasn't them.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> My only regret is that I really threw Margaret Gage under the bus here. (But the show never really went into why Gage married her in the first place, and that bothered me. What was their life like before he packed them off to Boston? I NEED ANSWERS.)
> 
> Also, apologies to cats everywhere for the repeated inclusion, but it seemed the best description for Lavinia. No idea what deep, dark hole she sprang from, but a certain Major John Andre may be next on her hit list.


End file.
